I started collecting Ugly Ties in High School when a friend of mine and I started exchanging ugly ties at Christmas. His mother had the most extraordinary collection -- most of it dispersed now --- from her work at Wanamaker's, a defunct Philadelphia institution. She snagged some beauties.
The museum first appeared online in 1995 (for a time as www.lescravatesdumal.com ). It was a mess. The bandwidth was too low, storage problems were constant, and people seemed to think I had more resources than I did. My email kept being swamped with scans of ties and people wanting me to buy their ties.
I'm back online with a lower-tech web site. The tie files are too large really -- ugly compresses poorly -- so I keep the pages static and the animation limited.
Please keep in mind that the patterns of the ties are copywritable, but the ties themselves are not. So, I display the ties as such. Trinkets at the museum shop are limited to my creations, as a result. (Collect them all!)
